poop's tuscaloosa dumplin'!

[Poop]

hahaa, check out that fender.

[Dash47331]

Cool thread, Poop!

[Poop]

last post of the night:

another buddy of mine, childhood friend from the neighborhood, grew up racing mx and has ridden with me since he was five. during the time i was off at school and living another life, will was on crotch rockets and doing crazy shit, so i hear. he was a big fan of my big bike from the beginning, but wasn't on that kind of budget. when i started this project, he was inspired to do a cheap metric chopper. he started his six months after i bought mine, and finished it another six months later... four years before i finished mine. he showed up at my office on this thing one day, and i was sick that he'd pushed through it so fast. i was also inspired by him, because his scoot was a blast to ride. i borrowed it many a time, and always had fun on it, and felt like it was part mine, too. i doubt he realizes how much that helped me with this build. made me think more about just how i wanted mine to turn out.

so anyway, here he is the day he first rode it up to my office.



and here's me cutting up on it later on, feeling ALIVE!





yeah, what more reminder do i need to keep my ass in that garage, and finish building the bike of my imagination. the feeling i'd have when that thing is done, would certainly be indescribable.


alright, thanks for reading, i'm off to bed. goodnight.

[EscaladeSteve]

Thanks for sharing poop, the truth about sleeping in the garage hit me hard. I was married 6 years and divorced a couple years into the bobber im building now. The bobber is 7 years in the making and will be done in 6 to 8 weeks. I not only appreciate this story but I relate to it. Looking forward to seeing more. Now go on and get you some brown party liquor and when your done have my name emblazened on the back of a denim jacket...have it read, "the good one"

[Boogeyman]

It's funny how life works out isn't it Poop? You have inspired me...I think I'll call my (re)build the Mississippi Mountain Oyster

[Choppa]

Poop, That ride is Killer.......

Call the Horse they are gunna want a write up !!!!!

Well Done !!!!

[Poop]

i watched The Astronaut Farmer the other day, and related to it bigtime. i mean, i'm not saying the movie was any good, just that i related to a guy everyone thought was crazy and foolish for investing himself in an out-of-the-box dream, spending odd hours and spare change on. it also made me especially grateful for a wife who is (generally) supportive of the effort, even encouraging. you're right, booger. it's funny how things work out.

[hanger]

Well done Poop! Keep the story and pics coming. Great job!

[Poop]

here's a pretty embarrassing bit: i just found more pictures of the first fender experimentation. it lays bare my ignorance on shaping metal--i basically wasted a $28 trailer fender i was given--but i followed through long enough to learn a few things, some of which helped me make a good fender out of another throwaway item.

anyway, here they are without further explanation.

[Poop]

[Pistol GripPump]

I think this is called polishing a turd, nice job man!

[Poop]

i think that was some of my first welding, as well.

overall, it was a big swing and miss. folks who saw it smirked and joked, mostly later when i wasn't around. i don't blame them one bit. other than the sweet hardtail my buddy had hooked me up with, this build didn't have a whole lot going for it. but i had something sitting over the rear tire, something to make me think about what else i wanted, and it also let me shift my attention and applied a little of what i learned to something else.

next attempt: to make a seat using ideas i've gotten from my life growing up on horses. i had some ideas about seats, and they were a little outside of the conventional thinking i often heard around bike folks. i wanted to make a seat that put into form what i thought would make a comfortable seat.

[Poop]

Originally Posted by Pistol GripPump

I think this is called polishing a turd, nice job man!

my sentiments exactly! and thanks!

[Poop]

for the seat, i started out with some cardboard, like you saw in a picture above. i had plenty of that shit lying around--no cost there. it gave me a chance to practice translating my thoughts into form.

my thoughts came from reflections of old saddles. saddlefitting is an old art form, and has as much to do (more, really) with fitting the horse than with fitting the rider. what does this have to do with my build? what a good saddle does is fit the horse evenly. if it matches the working contour of the horse's back, it doesn't need to be padded underneath much at all. they often aren't. and the same principle applies to the butt side of the equation. a hard ass piece of material can be very supportive, much more so over the long haul than an unformed puff of padding. structure, not fluff, is what provides support. and no matter how springy it is underneath, a badly shaped pan will have pressure points. those points where you feel pressure will be the source of your gripes and aches and pains at the end of the day. this lesson is literally beat into your ass on a 25 mile trail ride through mountain trails, something i accomplished for the first time at the age of four or five.

another feature of performance saddles is the height of the scoop in the back, and to some degree in the front. depending on what the saddle is used for, a deep cradle that helps hold your ass from sliding too far forward or rearward will REALLY save the rest of your body. for an exaggerated example, think about how hard it is to drag race with your chick on the back of your bike, sitting on a p-pad without a back rest or sissy bar, holding on to you to stay on. it feels like doing pullups with 150 lbs strapped to your back. maybe more. and it's way, WAY worse when your seat is flat, or even sloped rearward (i still don't get the comfort there). now imagine a day of riding with your chick like this, and after 5-6 hours you pull up next to some sweet chevelle tubbed out and rumbling like a total badass, and the guy is revving hard and giving you the look. you have to have fingers, forearms, biceps, shoulders, lats, abs, and a sphincter of steel to hang on and get a decent launch that way. and having some rise in the front relieves a lot of the strain that comes with hard braking.

having a nice deep dish in your seat relieves some of the strain on ALL those muscles.

so enough of my theory of comfortable seats, and on to my attempt to make one that puts those principles in practice. which is kind of comedic, given my last swing and miss. but onward and upward, right?

[Poop]

so here's a rough cutout of a pan that would fit the space i have, and compliment the shapes already in place.



putting an arch into it, i check to see if it has enough space for my ass cheeks.



i'm pretty sure i ended up cutting another cardboard blank even LONGER, because i needed plenty of material to have deep dish and plenty of room for my ass. if anyone is interested, i still have these pieces, to give dimensions.